Waiting until the last minute to file a Fair Debt Collection Practices Act before the one-year statute of limitations expires is not always the best idea, a plaintiff has learned. A District Court judge has denied the plaintiff’s motion to file an amended complaint after the plaintiff learned the identity of one of the defendants and sought to include him.
The background: The case stems from a June 2024 incident in which the plaintiff entered into a loan agreement to purchase a vehicle. Although the plaintiff claimed she was current on payments, the defendant allegedly hired a repossession company to take the vehicle. A repossession agent, identified only as John Doe at the time, allegedly entered the plaintiff’s locked garage without consent and damaged the garage door.
- The plaintiff sued, accusing the defendants of violating Section 1692f(6) of the FDCPA, and also pursued multiple state law claims.
- Because she filed her original complaint only two days before the FDCPA’s one-year statute of limitations expired, the plaintiff had not yet learned John Doe’s identity.
- Months later, during discovery, the plaintiff learned that the repossession agent was actually a company executive and sought leave to amend her complaint to name him.
The ruling: Judge Kimberly A. Jolson of the District Court for the Southern District of Ohio denied the motion, concluding that the amendment would be futile because it was time-barred and did not satisfy the “relation back” requirements.
- Judge Jolson explained that the Sixth Circuit does not allow relation back when a plaintiff simply does not know a defendant’s identity.
- The plaintiff argued that the Supreme Court’s Krupski decision supported her position, but the Court rejected that interpretation. As the judge noted, “Krupski’s problem is not Plaintiff’s problem,” because the plaintiff here did not mistakenly sue the wrong party — she never identified the individual she intended to sue during the limitations period.
- The Court also rejected equitable tolling, emphasizing that the plaintiff “left no time for Defendants to turn over [the] name before the limitations period ended.”
